Tom Brady swears that failed trick play worked in practice

Brady had a chance to be on the other side of a pass in Sunday’s Super Bowl LII, but he could not come up with the catch, letting the ball go off his fingertips. On the other side, Eagles quarterback Nick Foles caught a touchdown on a gutsy fourth-and-1 call by coach Doug Pederson.

The Brady play-call came on third-and-5 with 12 minutes left in the second quarter and the Patriots down 9-3. Brady handed the ball off to running back James White, who went to the offense’s left and then flipped the ball to wide receiver Danny Amendola. Amendola threw to a wide-open Brady along the sideline, but the ball went off his fingertips.

“Danny made a good throw,” Brady said. “I just didn’t make the play. It was there to be made and I missed the play.”

Brady said the play worked all week in practice.

“Yeah, I caught it, but I didn’t catch it tonight,” he said.

The Eagles, on the other hand, executed their play to perfection. The Eagles had practiced the play, called “Philly Special” for the past month during the playoffs. Pederson broke it out with 38 seconds left in the first half with the Eagles facing fourth-and-goal from the Patriots’ 1. Foles pretended like he was telling the right tackle something. The ball was then snapped to running back Corey Clement, who gave it to tight end Trey Burton, who threw a perfect pass to Foles for the score that gave the Eagles a 22-12 lead.

“The last two weeks I’ve been elbowing him when we were in the red zone trying to get it called,” said Burton, who played quarterback when he first got to the University of Florida. “Man, he’s got some guts to call it in the Super Bowl on fourth-and-1 on the 1-yard line.”

Foles, the MVP of the Super Bowl, said they had practiced it a lot, but it never worked as well as it did Sunday. Foles become the first quarterback to catch a touchdown pass in the Super Bowl.

“That’s probably the best it has looked,” Foles said. “So, we hit it at the right time.”

Brady’s inability to catch the ball drew plenty of jokes on social media. The most common was a reference to Brady’s model wife, who famously yelled at a fan after Super Bowl XLVI when the Giants beat the Patriots. After a fan yelled at her about Eli Manning’s superiority, she reportedly shouted back: “My husband cannot [bleeping] throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time! I can’t believe they dropped the ball so many times.”